


Take a Shot

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fem!Malik, Gender or Sex Swap, Mistaken Identity, Pole Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:41:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six-and-a-half months ago, Malik ran fist-first into some asshole where a white hoodie with no sense of direction.  Twenty two dates later, she finally gets to see that man naked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take a Shot

**Author's Note:**

> please note: I have strong feelings about AUs and changing characters names. As such Malik remains Malik regardless of the fact that she's now a female. Also, brief mention of miscarriage if that sort of thing upsets you.

Six-and-a-half months ago, Malik ran fist-first into some asshole where a white hoodie with no sense of direction and got a hot-coffee shower after already being ten-minutes behind schedule and sure to be about two minutes late to work. It had been summer then, brilliant sunshine and intolerable heat, and there was nothing in the world quite as curse-inducing as first degree burns all over her bare thighs and arms. The bastard had a look of blanked-out-horror on his face (his heated-pink face) and instead of thinking, apologizing or even having the common decency to take more than a half-step out of her space, opened his water bottle and threw the water on her. 

“The fuck is your problem!” Malik screamed at the man. Her shirt was sucked into her skin (the water was freezing) and there was a puddle of coffee and water in her shoes. The immature little shit was looking at the sheer-white of her shirt instead of her face. 

“Sorry,” the asshole said. “I—I was running, I didn’t see you and I don’t know why I thre water on you? I thought hot coffee and burning, I don’t even know.” Then he smiled with the most fleeting attempt at charm and cleared his throat. “Let me make this up to you?”

“I have a few ideas about how you can do that,” Malik snapped at him. Most of her ideas involved her fist and his testicles. None of them, at all, involved him stripping away his hoodie and removing his over-sized, body-hot and slightly-damp T-shirt and offering to her. “I don’t want your shirt,” she said. Then she looked down at her own chest, the clear outline of her breasts (no bras on Tuesdays, it was a rule) and took the shirt from him. 

“I like your tattoo,” the bastard said. He nodded down-at-her-hip where the upper edge of the flowers were visible over the waistband of her shorts. Then he grinned like a little shit. “Let me get you another coffee?”

“No. I don’t have time.”

“I bring it to you at work,” he said, “where do you work?”

Malik wanted to tell the asshole to fuck off (and possibly to crawl back into whatever ridiculous hole he crawled out of) but that smile was oh-so-hopeful. His chest was nothing but muscle, all tight and slim to his body, and there was the delicious warm color of his skin and the effortless way he stood there completely oblivious to his own attractive semi-nakedness. So Malik let a breath out through her nose (a habit her brother said made her bull-like) and then said, “fine. I work at Tino’s Bar and Grille. Ask for Mal.”

“Perfect,” the man said, “I’ll see you.”

\--

Twenty two dates ago, Malik suffered through drinks-after-work and small talk. She dutifully chewed-and-swallowed the free food Desmond provided her at some less-than-spectacular chain burger place and even suffered through the mundane silence that came between paying the bill and leaving with the leftovers. (Just fries, really.)

Desmond was funny. There was something offhanded and dry about his humor but it came in observational little gems that caught her somewhere below the ribs and shook laughs out of her when she tried to keep them back. It wasn’t that he was a perfectly good guy because he was nice-enough but he was _nice_ enough and every inch of him seemed as inoffensive as domestic kitten. 

“Two out of five?” Desmond said, “one out of five? Just tell me how terrible I’m doing so I know exactly how bad I should feel when I leave.”

“You’re lingering between a two and a three,” Malik said. “Out of five.” 

“Ah.” Desmond looked disappointed but resigned to his mediocre fate as he took a step and a half backward. “Well—I think I can still fix this.”

“I can’t imagine how.”

“Let me kiss you,” Desmond said, smooth-as-butter. Malik could have told him no, (probably should have told him no) except for how her eyes filled her body with the memory of how he looked under his unassuming button-down shirt. Every part of her (lower) body wanted to take the chance that this dopey guy was good in bed because rubbing up against his body seemed like a pretty damn good idea.

“It can’t make it worse,” she said. It was as much permission as she was going to give and it seemed to be exactly the right amount for Desmond because he sidled up to her with a hand brazenly wrapped around her waist and the other ghosting to the side of her face. His mouth tasted like onions-and-mustard (terrible conversation) even before his tongue invited itself over to her mouth. It was less than spectacular up to the exact moment he seemed to throw caution to wind and used his height to his advantage. Their bodies connected like a surge of something hot-and-sharp, and she put her arms up around his neck and stretched her body just to have the excuse to press closer to him. 

God, but he was solid under those stupid clothes. Not even that bad of a kisser when he really applied himself (a bit sloppy, a bit too nice) but these small failings were forgivable. Malik pulled back first and licked the taste of him away from her lips as she settled back onto her heels. “Maybe a three-four,” she said.

“Yeah?” Desmond said all pink-and-proud. “Good enough to get another try?”

“Yeah.”

\--

Inauspicious as their beginning was, hanging out with Desmond was a welcome change from the monotony of dealing with her younger-and-cuter-and-nicer little brother. Kadar had an effortless air of lovability that floated around him like a fucking cloud. People loved Kadar—his professors at university, his college mates, their parents, Malik’s coworkers, random strangers and the cat that moved into their apartment after meeting Kadar on the balcony one day. 

Malik didn’t like being a waitress. She didn’t like men staring at her bare thighs and her breasts. She didn’t like smiling like an idiot while she delivered food to ungrateful people that left terrible tips. She didn’t like putting up with well-meaning but utterly pointless advice from old ladies who ogled her with nearly the same intensity as the men. 

Desmond was good because he was _easy_. Their second date was a late-late-after work two in the morning meet up at an all night diner with Desmond smelling like the floor of a bar. Malik could have drank the smell of him and gotten a good buzz from it but she settled for crawling into his lap in the short space of his driver’s-side seat. His fucking body was unreal and it was all she could do to keep from tearing his clothes off. 

But he said, like a sigh of regret, ‘too tired’ and she let him go with filthy promises.

\--

Fucking Desmond was not exactly a revelation after date number three and four demonstrated the same frustrating lack of sex as date number two. Date five was back-at-his-place with some flimsy pretense of watching a movie thrown by the wayside as soon as he came back from the kitchen with fresh-popped popcorn. 

“You want salt?” Desmond was asking when he sat down but Malik had worn a skirt for the express purpose of being able to climb into his lap without having to worry about taking her pants off first. Her panties (useless little scraps of something black in case Desmond like that kind of thing) were tucked into the cushions of the couch. “Guess not,” was the remark he made with both of his big hands sliding up into her skirt. His skin was soft-not-rough (not at all how she thought they’d be when they first met) but his body followed through on the promises it made. 

\--

The twin, Altair, did not show up until date nine. Malik was waiting for Desmond (meet at my place, the man said) when Altair showed up with a fat lip and pink-bruised knuckles. His shirt was thrown over his shoulder with spots of blood soaked into the bleached-white fabric. Altair was a perfect-damn-match save for the air of naked hostility. 

“What?” was the very first thing Altair said to her, and then before she could answer that his idiot twin brother had managed to not mention his existence up to this point, he rolled his eyes and said, “never mind. He didn’t tell you. I’m Altair, older, smarter and better looking.”

“You’re identical,” Malik said. She motioned toward the scar on his lip. “You guys do those yourselves?”

Altair snorted at the notion. “No, I got mine fighting the kid that used to pick on my kid cousin. Desmond asked me to give him one because we couldn’t pretend to be each other anymore.”

“How’d that go over with your mother?” Because nobody in the world actually gave their brother an identical matching scar just because he was stupid enough to ask for it. That sort of thing was reserved for psychopaths. 

“Grandmother,” Altair corrected. Then he narrowed his eyes and the action seemed to remind him that his face was swelling because he rubbed his hand across his mouth and smeared blood across his cheek. “Didn’t Desmond tell you anything? Parents are dead, he has a twin. Our Grandmother raised us until she died. Then our Aunt and Uncle took us in—they’re rich as shit—but I’m a trouble maker and we got kicked out. I didn’t cut my brother’s face open so he decided to do it himself.” 

“Of course he did,” Malik said. 

Altair licked his lips and then cleared his throat. “You don’t seem like his type.”

“He’s not my type. I’m just using him for his incredible body.” Because it was the truth. She was expecting Altair to roll his eyes or to say something sly-and-mean (because he looked like the sly-and-mean sort) but she wasn’t expecting the way he shuffled at the ground and squeaked out a hardly-audible:

“Mine’s better.”

Desmond showed up like a natural disaster in the next moment, apologizing all over himself and putting his body between Altair-and-her like he knew exactly the sort of person his brother was (of course he did). “I was hoping to keep him a secret a while longer.” Desmond said it all light-and-airy, full of an easy-wheeze of fun.

“I can see why,” Malik said. 

\--

Kadar liked everyone in the whole world, the kid had gullibility oozing out of his damn pores and it came out like friendly smiles and genuine good will. Desmond loved-that-about-him in the way people loved fluffy-little-animals with simple little minds.

“Yeah,” Desmond said, “I’ll have to get that movie.” But the words were hollow-as-hell and even Kadar who believed everyone knew it. But her brother smiled all the same and made the small-bullshit-talk about how Desmond really should.

Malik didn’t care because it was date number eleven and her body was getting used to the feeling of rubbing all over Desmond’s. Her skin was raw from fucking him and she was mellow and cool from a good orgasm. So she kissed Desmond and shoved him out the door. “I never claimed he was a film critic.”

“What a dick,” Kadar said. 

“That’s what I said,” Malik said. She went to the kitchen to bang around the cabinets and find something worth eating but Kadar followed after her because he smelled-blood-like-a-shark. “I don’t even want to hear about it.”

“To be clear,” her brother said, “this is just about sex, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I like him.”

She turned around to look at Kadar then, to demand he explain whatever convoluted nonsense allowed him to arrive at that conclusion. His smile was as sunny as ever when he said, “you’re never going to fall in love with him, Malik. You can barely muster up enough energy to maintain your affectionate indifference. I had to talk the last man you kind of liked out of suing you after you tried to break his left hand.”

“I’m trying out something new.”

“No you’re not.” Then Kadar left before Malik could throw things at him. 

\--

Altair persisted in existence, though. To his credit he never directly pretended to be his brother but there was once-twice when he was awake in the middle of the night after a late-meet-up-turned-sex-at-your-place when Malik bumped into him half-asleep. 

“Ugh,” Malik said after the second time. 

“What?” Altair asked.

“You need to wear a shirt that says Not Desmond whenever I’m half awake. This fucking identical thing is driving me crazy.” She pulled open the fridge and dug out a beer because Desmond was apparently too lazy after sex to do anything worthless and she wasn’t tired-enough yet to bother with laying down. “You said he cut his own face so you two would still be identical.”

“Yes,” Altair answered. He was sitting on the counter in the kitchen (shirtless) eating a bowl of what looked like microwave ramen with a plastic fork. His feet were bare and his loose-fitting-pants were rucked up at awkward slashes across his lower legs. “Except his is thicker and longer on the top than mine. He had to get stitches and I didn’t.”

“How did you get yours again?” Malik asked.

“Fight.”

“You do that a lot?”

Altair shrugged. “I fight when the situation calls for it.”

Malik popped the top off the beer and threw the cap into the trash before leaning back against the counter opposite Altair. She considered (for just a moment) how weird it was to have a conversation with someone’s twin brother when the dampness between her thighs wasn’t even fully dried yet and she was wearing the shirt she all but tore off Desmond’s body earlier. “That’s bullshit.”

“And you based this on how much you know about me.”

“How much do I need to know about you to know that you like to start fights? Let’s see what I do know: you think your own brother is an idiot,” Altair nodded his head, “you’ve got four bruises I can see right now and they’re all different colors. You have the sort of face that just invites people to hate you,” and Altair frowned at the words, “you think very highly of yourself and you came onto me even though you know I’m dating your brother.”

Altair’s smile was wicked and coiled on his face, looking every bit as much like a threat as the way his body moved. Whatever else the man did with his spare time, he had mastered the art of intimidation a long-time-ago. Malik shifted on her feet and met him in the middle of the space, looked back up at his glower with a fearless little smirk on her face and her lips wet with beer. “Two things.” He held up two of his fingers to illustrate the point. “I didn’t come on to you. Yet.” (What a fucking asshole.) “That’s my fucking shirt you’re wearing.”

“Desmond was wearing it,” Malik said back.

“Imagine that little bastard taking something of mine without asking,” Altair said. Then he threw his bowl into the sink and left the room without another word.

\--

Date fifteen was out-in-public, they were short on mutually interesting topics to discuss so Malik said, “what does your brother do anyway?”

Desmond was checking his phone (just a second, he said) so he made a disgruntled, non-committal kind of noise before he tore himself away long enough to remember she existed. When he looked at her there was a blankness behind his eyes that seemed like the blue screen on a computer before his smile slid back into place. “Um, he’s a pole dancer? I think. I don’t fucking know what he does. If he told me that he stole cars I’d believe him. If he told me he was a hit man for the mafia I’d believe him.”

“A pole dancer?” Malik repeated.

“Yeah, he works at the blue-something ladies’ club? I think. I really don’t know. He used to work at a gay bar but he said he’s less gay now than he used to be.” Desmond shrugged and picked his phone back up. 

\--

Altair was smoking weed on the little balcony at the back of the apartment when Malik was looking for a breath of fresh air just to get away from Desmond and Desmond’s phone. (This is important, the man said. It probably was. That didn’t make it any less annoying.) Altair didn’t even bother to look shocked or to hide what he was doing. No he stretched the length of his body and motioned at the ugly plastic lawn chair next to his; when she was sitting he offered her a drag off the joint. 

It filled her head with sweet-cotton-candy and left her joints feeling liquid and loose. But Altair looked furious in a cloud of thin gray smoke. 

“He won’t make you happy, you know,” Altair said. His eyes closed at the words like he wanted to taste them on his tongue for half-a-second longer.

“Don’t know, his dick does a passable job at creating the sensation of happiness,” she said and then snorted at the ridiculous statement. “This the part where you tell me I need a man and he’s just a little boy? Fuck, I’ve heard that stupid line a lot. What is it with you dicks and thinking that everyone is slobbering over your greatness?”

“Pussy,” Altair said. His voice croaked like a frog and it was some terrible hot flash of stupid and infuriating. 

“Fuck you,” Malik said before she could stop herself. The words spilled out of her mouth like the violent clench of her fists and the drag of the soles of her shoes across the gritty concrete balcony. 

But Altair was only smiling. “You’re just a woman,” he said. “Nice boys don’t hit girls. Nice boys don’t hurt pretty girls.”

The very last thing in the world that Malik ever had been was a pretty-fucking-girl. She was too-gawky-tall, with a jaw like a man’s and inky-dark hair that grew in thick and coarse everywhere she didn’t waste her life shaving. She had hands as big as plates with a grip stronger than her brother’s and someone-somewhere had told her she must have been born with the taste of blood in her mouth because she was always looking for a fight. (Not she wasn’t, not anymore.) But it was too many words to spit out of her numb-lips so she threw herself at Altair. His reflexes were dulled by smoke but he still caught her in mid-leap and the strength of his arms were holding her up just high enough that she could scratch as his arms and knee him in the gut. 

The struggle was brief before her back was against the glass-sliding-doors and his hand had one of hers pinned down as she punched him hard (once) in the ribs before he elbowed her in the same place. The pain was a sobering-sharp-shock in her body that breezed out of her mouth in a grunt twisted into a moan (of pain). 

“Yeah,” Altair said like he was finishing a thought he hadn’t ever expressed, “Desmond won’t fight you, Malik. Look at how bored you are already. You deserve something better.”

Malik head butted Altair and considered it the only logical response. He pulled back to shake his head and then came back with his hands up and his body shifting into a defensive stance like they were really going to give this a go. But Desmond was coming through the shaky-glass doors with an outraged look on his face. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Desmond was shouting.

“Nothing,” Altair snapped. Then he turned to the rail of the balcony, put two hands on it and lifted himself up-and-over before dropping off it entirely. The exit was so utterly ridiculous that Malik found herself laughing like she couldn’t-fucking-help-it while Desmond frowned. 

“Yeah, maybe you should stay off your phone, fuck head,” Malik said to him then she turned and went back inside.

\--

‘Sorry,’ Desmond said a few days later. Malik was bitter-and-bored. She accepted his apologetic fuck and didn’t think about his stupid twin brother’s stupid smug face at all.

\--

Except for when she did. Except for when Altair was in the kitchen of the apartment eating ramen and rice and reheated Chinese takeout. Except for when he was on the stairs while she was on her way up and he was on his way out and he looked infuriated and hurt and she wanted to throw rocks at him just _because_.

Except for Altair slouching on the couch flipping through channels and Desmond already-asleep in the other room. Malik had insomnia and Altair never seemed to sleep so they fell into sitting together in the living room watching infomercials during the blackest part of the night. Altair said, “Malik is a man’s name.”

“I was born a man,” she said.

“No you weren’t,” Altair said. “You menstruate and therefore you are all woman. I can’t imagine your parents would really give you a man’s name.”

“Great mystery of life,” Malik said. 

“My father was ‘of Arabic descent’,” Altair said with his tone implying the air quotes his fingers did not make.

“Yeah I figured that out what with your name and all,” Malik said. “If this is the part of the conversation that segues into how fascinating you find my culture please don’t bother. Anything you’ve got to ask can be found on Google and I’d rather not talk about it. I’ve been formally disowned which is actually the kindest thing my parents could do, all things considered.”

“Is that why you’re pissed all the time?” Altair asked.

“Are you pissed because your parents are dead?” Malik snapped back. For a half-second she thought she had gone too far and a curl of something like dread was worming up from the bottom of her gut. 

Then, Altair’s laugh so very unlike Desmond’s. He shook his head, “no. They have been dead my whole life. Maybe my life would have been different if they hadn’t been but how the hell could anyone know that, really?”

“Desmond said you were a pole dancer or something,” Malik said.

Altair nodded. “Currently on display at the Blue Swan—stupid name, nice club. You should come by sometime, sit in the front, throw singles at the stage and make noise for me.”

“You’re stupid,” Malik said. She left though, before her brain could do anything with the notion of Altair on a pole and the things he must have been able to do with the strength contained in his arms.

\--

“Who is it?” Kadar asked her between date sixteen and seventeen when Malik yelled at him about forgetting to buy toilet paper. She was red-in-the-face with anger at the irresponsibility and Kadar was cool-as-a-cucumber with a knowing little smile on his face. “Come on, tell your brother who lit your pilot light.”

“You’re an idiot,” Malik shouted at him. 

But she was shaking-still when she stopped running. She was outside, lost, somewhere between here and her apartment and her brother’s knowing little smirk. Her fingers were in her hair and her teeth were on her tongue and she was spinning-a-thousand-thoughts about things-she’d-given-up a long time ago. 

\--

“Wow,” Desmond said after the most drastic hair-cut Malik had gotten since she was removed from her family. (Cleanly and calmly as her father and mother preferred.) The woman who cut her hair and lamented the loss of the length of it as she clipped it away and shaved the sides leaving only the thick coil of Malik’s unruly-at-best hair at the top. The weather was getting colder and hats were going to be a necessity but the lightness of being the haircut brought was a delicious-fresh-change. 

“You hate it,” Malik said.

“No,” but Desmond hated it. “It’s just very different. Do you like it?”

Malik nodded. They didn’t fuck that night, but fall back into the awkwardness of their very-first-date when Desmond wasn’t worth her fucking time and all she had to look forward to was the cold comfort of masturbation and fantasies about his naked body. 

It was Altair, in the early morning (looking uneasy with fistfuls of singles) that smiled at her like she was something worthwhile and beautiful exactly as she was. He tipped his head to the side and looked at the left side of her head where the little flock of birds rose from the nape of her neck swelling into the biggest birds in the center and back into increasing smaller little black silhouettes into her hair. “How long have you had those?” he asked. 

The tattoos were one of the first ones she’d gotten back when the idea of freedom haunted her like a bad dream. Birds-were-a-thing for her in a way the black-and-white flowers on her hip weren’t. (Pretty wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t _her_ , really.) “A while,” she said. She sat on the barstool that stood lonely in the narrow kitchen and sighed, “I want to get an eagle on my back. Maybe an owl on my side—I just haven’t figured out exactly what kind.”

“Of course they’re all raptors. That seems like you, a highly evolved predator,” Altair said. “What did Desmond think of your haircut?”

“Doesn’t like it but he says he does,” Malik said. 

“Fuck him,” Altair said. He dropped the cash into a box on the counter and stepped closer to Malik, “may I?” he was motioning to the side of her head with the birds on her scalp and she nodded her head and tipped it to the side. The acute bareness of her throat was like a surge of something dirty-and-wrong that dropped straight down through her gut. It was a warm and encouraging pulse that made her skin feel hot. 

“This is a bad idea,” Malik said quietly.

Altair’s voice was so-fucking-close to her skin when he said, “I told you I’m a troublemaker.” But he relented and stepped away. 

\--

Kadar went to the Blue Swan with her because she told him to. He withstood the embarrassment of paying the cover and ignored the catcalls and odd stares of the patrons of the club. He even took a seat in the front even if he ducked his shoulders and tried to hide his face. “I can’t believe you,” Kadar hissed at her.

“I was invited,” Malik answered back. She didn’t say _by who_ but it wasn’t like Kadar wouldn’t figure it out in ten-to-fifteen minutes when it was time for Altair to show up and do his supposed pole dancing routine. “Just remember that time I let you tell that stalker girl I was your girlfriend if you start to think about running for it. You owe me.”

Kadar growled in frustration but obligingly stayed quiet. The waiter that stopped by to drop off drinks winked at her brother and didn’t seem to notice or care that Malik existed. (Unsurprising, as always. Kadar-the-angel, always so beloved and coveted.) “I hate you,” Kadar whispered to her.

But Malik was too busy smiling into the lip of her cup waiting for Altair to show his stupid face. It was five-minutes and a variety of welcoming drivel from the announcer that greeted them before the music started. Altair was on stage dressed in something that looked a great deal like fabric draped artfully around his body—stunning but temporary. His arms were bare and the flex of obvious muscle was enough to get a cheer from the crowd. 

“You did not bring me out to watch your boyfriend’s twin brother, you didn’t.”

“Oh I did,” Malik said. 

Maybe she was expecting some kind of faux pole dancing, all gripping and gyrating and strutting around to the beat of the music. It seemed like the sort of thing that her mind must have made up in the in between moments she had to think about it. But Altair did-nothing-at-all like that. No, he took one-two-quick steps and grabbed the thing before lifting himself entirely off the ground and using the strength of his arms alone to lift his whole body from the floor. That long drape of fabric he jokingly called clothing shifted enough to expose the warm-tan of his skin underneath with every little motion.

“That’s unreal,” Kadar said quietly. “Do you see what he’s doing?”

Yeah, she saw him. The absolute control he had over his body, the way he seemed to be suspended in mid-air by the power of will alone, certainly not by the grip of his two hands against a shiny metal bar. The music was an obnoxious backbeat to the motion of his body—not quite in sync, not quite the sound that it should have been—but the crowd was eating it up, gasping and shouting at every slip-slide of that stupid flimsy outfit he was wearing. By the time he dropped his feet back to the ground and pulled it off, the stage in front of him had a litter of bills. 

Altair saw her (couldn’t miss her) and the strangest look crossed his face, all pleased-and-embarrassed before he fell back into the routine. There was sheer power in all the tight lines of his body and Malik could have cared less about every other person in the world because all she wanted was to crawl up onto the stage and pull him down again. She was six-seconds-away from taking this blatant mating display at face value and jumping him with the crinkle of sweaty-palmed-singles under their backs.

“You’re grinding your teeth,” Kadar said.

“This is stupid, we shouldn’t have come.” Malik stood up and left and Kadar yelped out a plea to wait and followed after her.

\--

The trouble was that Desmond was such a good fucking guy. A dork, sure. But it wasn’t like they’d fallen into this relationship with any false pretenses in place. She’d said yes-again-and-again for the sake of sex and getting her hands on his body. Desmond was dutiful the way you were when you chugged along at something you did-but-didn’t-want.

Anything was better than being alone (not really, not at all). Then there was Altair hanging out in the kitchen with a glisten of shower-water still wet on his shoulders and yet another microwaved dinner waiting for him. “Hey,” he said over his shoulder when Malik stopped in the kitchen.

“You looked like you hated those women at the club.”

“I’m not paid to pretend I like them.” Altair turned around to look at her though. His shoulders were high-and-haughty and his face was tipped so he had to look down his nose at her. What the hell was she in comparison to the raw power he had in his body? The talent that allowed him to contort his body anyway he wanted? Malik was shorter-and-slimmer and not nearly-as-strong as that. “Is that why you left?”

“No.”

“Then why?” Altair said.

“Fuck,” she snapped because _he knew_ why. Then she shook her head and slid one footstep closer to him with her voice a tremor-sort-of-whisper, she said, “you aren’t as good as you think you are.”

His laugh was bitter-and-loud. “I’m better than the rest of those idiots they’ve got dancing. And exactly how would you know how good I am? You go see a lot of strip shows? You didn’t even stay for the whole thing.”

Malik rolled her eyes. “I didn’t need to. You have excellent technique, you’ve got astounding control but it’s nothing but showing off!”

“That’s the point,” Altair said.

“Yeah, well one day how about you show me something a little deeper and I won’t walk out before you’re finished.” She turned around to go and he made a noise of aggravation at her back that was almost a perfect echo of the door she slammed just to get away from his stupid face.

\--

But Altair was relentless around the corner of the twentieth date, like he’d only been playing at something before. He showed up where she worked, ordering coffee and toast at two in the afternoon with a stupid smile on his face, talking about how it was his breakfast time. It wasn’t every-single-day or even every-other-day but often enough that it seemed to be a constant itch. 

(He was in her head, looking enough like his twin brother that her midnight-sex-dreams didn’t bother to point out the difference. But his body against hers didn’t feel the way Desmond’s did.)

“Stop,” is what she said to him on the six-or-seventh go around of having to serve him toast and coffee. He tipped her in crinkled singles and she had to bit her cheeks to keep from screaming at him about arrogance and kicking him in the testicles. He was outside on the sidewalk, going toward his car and she was still wearing her apron tied around her hip. 

“Stop what?” Altair asked. He didn’t even have the decency to admit guilt, but he turned on the heel of one foot to face her with his hands in the dirty-white-hoodie with a coffee stain down the front. His head was tipped to the side and he looked oh-so-sweetly-innocent. “Tipping? I could stop tipping if you’d like.”

“How do you think this is going to end?” Malik demanded.

Altair shrugged. Then he moved closer to her, one-two-steps as quick as anything stopping when he was close enough the rich smell of his body was an overwhelming assault against her nerves. She was furious and he was just _there_ with an expression that was neither a smile nor a scowl but some satisfied grin that came off as angry. “How do you think this is going to end?”

“With me kicking your stupid ass.”

“Deal,” Altair said.

“What?” 

Altair stepped back. “When do you get off work? We’ll go to my cousin’s gym and you can beat my stupid ass.”

Malik wanted nothing in the world so badly as she wanted to punch the bastard in the face until his teeth fell out—all those ones in the front that showed through when he shark-smiled at her. So she spit out an agreement and turned back to go inside.

\--

It was a bad-fucking-idea but Malik got in the car anyway. They drove to a gym, met a friendly Italian-type guy (Ezio, Altair said, my cousin) with long hair and a congenial smile who obligingly allowed them use of his equipment (free of charge) and they were standing there one-against-one stripped down to shorts and underclothes. 

“I honestly did not expect you to be wearing a bra,” Altair said. As if it were just something you could say to your brother’s girlfriend. He wasn’t even ogling her tits (as unimpressive as they were) but staring shamelessly at the top edge of the tattoo on her hip.

“Well, you know. It’s not Tuesday.”

“No bra on Tuesdays, good to know.”

They beat the hell out of one another, blows blunted by the gloves but no less deep. Altair was panting and sweating in the end, pink-splotched from the blows she’d landed all over him. Big-tall-boy was used to fighting big-tall-boys and Malik was shorter-and-faster and _furious_. 

It was after, in the dark out in front of the gym that Altair said: “I’d kill a man for my brother.” He was standing there with his shirt crooked on his shoulders and a conspicuous guilt doing nothing to temper the anger that lingered on his face like a shadow.

“You don’t even like him half the time,” Malik said.

“Neither do you.” Altair didn’t say it like an accusation, just an observation and the lack of shame implied made the words all the more shameful. “We should do this again. Maybe get you a coach first.”

“You going to tell me you went easy on me?” Malik said.

“Would you rather I lie? You’ve got the power to knock me down, Malik. You just don’t have the training.” 

“Shut up.” Malik was going to leave it just like that, not another word. She was willing to be driven back to the restaurant in silence, leave Altair without another word of encouragement (or honestly, a word of discouragement). Except that the closer they got to her car and her life with all of its mediocre disappointments the harder it was to keep herself from saying, “thank you.”

Altair parked next to her car and nodded. “No problem.”

\--

Kadar found her late-late in the night, sitting in her ratty old flannel pants and tank top, knee to her chest, ink stains all over her hands and a scatter of doodles and drawings in a careless circle all around her where she’d flung them. There was a scatter of owls creeping up her left arm where she’d gotten bored with paper and moved onto skin. 

Oh, her sweet angel-faced little brother (beloved by all) just dropped down to sit on the opposite side of the crooked coffee table. His hair was in sleep knots and his eyes were weighed down with an incomplete dream but he yawned himself awake for her sake. His fingers were careful with the papers, aware of the precious weight of them as he picked them up and stacked them again. “Look, I’m only going to say this because I love you.”

Malik nodded her head because actually responding would have been more than she was capable of just-right-then. 

“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” Kadar said gently. “It’s okay to hate your job and love a person.”

Her tongue across her lips tasted like salt-water-on-skin but her eyes were dry. She let out a little breath like a white-flag-surrender. “Who the hell is really going to love someone like me?” Because Kadar was her baby-brother, so far away from the life they were born into because he made a choice between her-and-them and their parents had not won. Kadar was a good-kid, a nice-kid, a real _person_ who knew every terrible thing Malik had done in the short eternity of her life from then to now. 

“Someone who sees you as the person you are, not the sum of your mistakes and not the façade you present.” Then he set the stack of papers in front of her and nudged them in her direction. “I like the owlets.”

“Suck up,” Malik said.

Kadar nodded and got back to his feet. “You’re older, you’re supposed to have your shit together so you can guide me, not the other way around.”

\--

She went for a run, ended up at the gym where Altair had taken her to fight a few rounds but still couldn’t explain how she ended up standing in front of the friendly Italian guy with the matching-face-scar of his cousins. 

“He said you’d be back,” Ezio (presumably) said. “My sister is going to train you. I was going to have one of the other women do it but Altair said you’d break them. He’s usually pretty right about that sort of thing.”

Claudia (Ezio’s sister) was an inch and a half shorter than Malik with a model-actress-pretty face and a sweet-toned-voice that did nothing to hide the grit caught in her mouth. Her smile was so sly-and-so-sharp that Malik found herself smiling back. 

\--

She-ran-into Altair outside of his apartment. It wasn’t exactly chance when she showed up an hour before Desmond even got off work with a spread thin excuse of having nothing else to do and wanting to make use of the big TV in their cramped little living room. But Altair nodded along and invited her up. 

They bumped awkwardly into one another once-twice before Altair put his arms around her with such gentle hesitancy that it was nearly ridiculous. Malik was going to point out to him how stupid it was but her arms slid around his ribs and her face tucked itself against his chest where the combined smell of his skin-and-sweat-and-detergent-and-deodorant mixed altogether. He pulled back first, knocked their foreheads together before he cleared his throat, “want a drink?”

“Yeah,” she said.

He got her a beer and they sat on opposite ends of the couch with their backs against the arms and their legs crossed in front of them. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“I’m impressed you didn’t already assume you had the right.”

Altair ignored that bit of bait and said, instead, “why the flowers?”

“I lost a baby,” Malik said. It was amazing how easily those words crossed her lips. It was amazing how Altair’s face didn’t shift from interested to an immediate caricature of overwrought sympathy. The steady expression on his face changed only by the fractional shift of his eyebrows and the quirk of his lips as he worked out whether to open his mouth or not. Malik sighed. “People tell me they cannot imagine what it must have been like. It was a miscarriage, early in the pregnancy. I hardly had enough time to realize I was pregnant and then I wasn’t. It was two weeks, actually. Really wasn’t a surprise, I was trying to do something reckless.”

“Until you did,” Altair said.

Malik took a drink to that sentiment. “I had a miscarriage and everyone was very sorry for me. Even now if it comes up, they are all very sorry for me. I wasn’t sad when I lost the baby. I cried because I was just so _relieved_. Because I spent two weeks trying to figure out if I could even go through with an abortion. I was awake for days imagining if I could live with myself. But then my body just took care of the problem for me and I was so relieved.”

“Are the flowers for the guilt of being glad you never had the child or grief for the loss of it?” Altair asked.

“Both,” Malik said. “Sometimes just a reminder not to be so stupid and selfish.”

So he took a drink and held his bottle out toward her to toast. He licked the beer off his lips and looked down at his hands as he said, “when my Grandmother first died, we lived with my Aunt and Uncle—very good people, very rich people—I had a girlfriend at the time. Adha, she was the love of my life. I was never going to love anyone ever again the way I loved Adha. Ezio, at the gym you know, he can’t help himself around women. He has to flirt with everything. I know that now, it’s just who he is. But my Grandma just died and then Ezio kept flirting with Adha. He just wouldn’t stop.”

Malik nodded. “You know, someone that didn’t know better might think those lip scars you boy have were hereditary traits.”

Altair smiled. “I took him down hard. Desmond tried to drag me off him but I was so mad. It was just so important. My Uncle and Ezio’s brother finally got me off him. They told me I was too dangerous to have around their younger children.”

“Claudia?” Malik said, “she could kick your ass.”

“She can now. She wasn’t very old then. Anyway, they put me out on the street in style, gave Desmond the option of staying with them or living with me. He came with me.”

“Fuck him,” Malik said. Because she knew the feeling on Altair’s face, that raw-red-wound of being the disappointment. She had stood in front of her parents adoring her angel-faced brother all-the-while knowing she was never-ever going to be the thing her parents wanted. Maybe she understood what it was like to be on the receiving end of obligated-love. Or maybe she understood what loyalty felt like when it came from the one person in the world that you loved-and-hated for things they never even did. “Fuck all of them.”

When Altair leaned forward, Malik met him in the center. The kiss was wet-and-slippery, a mess of things she wasn’t used to feeling. Altair’s hand on her face was condensation damp-and-cool but his mouth was a bitter heat. It was her, not him, that moved first: pushed closer to him until his arms were around her and her legs were spread across his lap. He was hot-as-a-furnace when her palms pushed down into his shirt. His little noises were humming-vibrations against her lips.

“Oh hell,” he said all in breath, “I can’t do this to him.”

Malik rested her head against Altair’s and closed her eyes. His hands were on her waist and hers were on his shoulders. “It should have been you,” she mumbled. And the tight-clench of his hands echoed the words.

\--

Date twenty one (long overdue), Desmond took her out on a canoe. They drifted in the lazy sun with lifejackets around their necks and the oars across their laps. Desmond said, “Altair is terrified of water, you know. He always has been. Pretty sure he could jump off the tallest building in the world without a second thought but he can’t take a bath or step in a puddle.”

“I really don’t want to talk about your brother,” Malik said.

Desmond gave her a sad-kind-of-look before he took a breath in and said, “really? I can’t swear I’ve seen him this constantly angry since high school. That was some bloody warfare.”

“I will tip this canoe over and let you drown if you do not stop.”

“You said you didn’t like his dancing and I had to hear about that for days. The things he called you,” Desmond whistled. “My brother doesn’t really care about people. He watches and he remembers and sometimes he starts fights but he doesn’t really care about it. Nana said he was born without it—whatever makes a person really a person. So the fact that he cares about your opinion is a big deal.”

“To him, not me.”

Desmond rolled his eyes, grabbed the sides of the canoe and threw them over. It was a sudden-wet splash of frigid-pond-water everywhere at once before she got above the water again and the uncomfortable clench of the life jacket did nothing to temper her anger at the impishly smiling asshole in the water next to her. “Altair spilled coffee on you. He was running from some jerk who hit his girlfriend, Altair got between them and punches were thrown then the lady started shouting about calling the cops. That’s why he ran into you, actually. He sent me to bring you coffee so you wouldn’t think he was a liar and I asked you out instead. I didn’t know, he didn’t tell me for a few weeks and by then it seemed like we had a shot.”

The whole fucking world could have been sent hurtling into the sun for the shocking lack of gravity that sucked at Malik’s gut. Her whole body was cold-and-then hot as fire and the sounds that Desmond was making weren’t translating into _words_ anymore.

Desmond grabbed one of the floating oars. “We don’t have a shot, Malik. Partially because I don’t speak whatever violence-based language the two of you speak and partially because I like this girl named Lucy and I’d like to like her more.” Then, after a breath, “please don’t hurt me.”

Malik blinked at him and then turned her head toward whatever direction her body felt Altair was in. “He _knew_.”

\--

Malik had absolutely no intention of finding-and-fucking Altair as the very first order of business when Desmond returned her to her car with a fond farewell. She was thinking about dry clothes and a shower and an attempt at rationality to work out exactly how she felt about this information she’d just received. 

“Where is he?” she shouted at Desmond’s retreating back.

“Uh,” Desmond said not-even-trying to be coy, “the gym. Don’t go easy on him.”

\--

Altair was in the ring with Ezio the two of them glistening with sweat as they did circles around one another trying to find an opening. There was a tight but tired looking crowd watching them muttering one-thing-or-another about how long the two of them had been at this now. Claudia was standing over in the corner working with some lady that looked like she escaped suburbia hell. 

Malik shoved her way through the sweaty-bodies around the ring, slid between the ropes and put herself bodily between Ezio and Altair forget the tight-fight-tension. She meant to scratch the bastard’s eyes out, to scream at him about wasting their time and toying with her like an idiot. She was going to beat the senselessness of selfless chivalry (letting his brother have a chance with her) into his head with her imminently selfish fists but as soon as her skin touched his she was using the strength in his body to pull hers up against him. 

Her fingers were in his sweaty hair, her arm was around his shoulders and his blunt grip was holding her up as she lifted her legs off the floor. His mouth tasted like mouth-guard and blood. They stumbled one-two steps back and his tongue was licking into her mouth. “Fuck,” she said, “your cousin got an office?”

The slashed-red-grin on his face was the most fantastically attractive thing she had ever seen. He let her down, grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the ring without a word of explanation. The crowd around the ring gaped-in-silence and Ezio looked resign to the defilement of his office. Altair pulled her through a door marked employees-only, down a short hall and into an office with dusty blinds covering the window in the door. There was a scatter of papers on the desk and a beat-up looking leather couch against the wall. Files and a safe and assorted other things that she saw too quickly to catalogue before Altair was pulling her up against him again. 

Her two hands kept enough space between them that she could push him away. “What?” he said just seconds before she pulled her still-damp shirt over her head. It took him another second (long enough to stare at her bare breasts) before he was ripping at the gloves on his hands to get them off. She was bare-skinned and impatient, pulling his shorts off his narrow hips before he managed to get the gloves off his hands. 

“Wait,” Altair said. He went around the desk and rummaged in the drawer before he held a condom up victoriously. Then he was back, stalking across the short distance between their bodies and grabbing her hard enough to pull her feet off the floor. His mouth on hers was six-months of aggravation and _want_ , every bit of possession and lust she wanted to taste. His hand was big against her breast and his fingertips were rough spread across sensitive skin. 

“Shit,” she said in the next breath. “We’ll do this better next time.” Her hand was on his dick, mercilessly working him until he was hard and panting into her hair. “Fuck me.”

Altair put the condom on and stooped low enough to grab her by the thighs. Her back hit the wall even as her hand pulled his dick into place and the force of their bodies meeting was a hollow thump and a distant ricocheting sound of picture frames moving against the wall. He wasn’t gentle-wasn’t-nice but relentless as he fucked her. Her nails were pink streaks across his skin and his hands were hard-white-pressure marks on her legs holding her up. His hair was soaked in sweat and their bodies were rushing together with ugly-wet-squeals. 

His mouth was sucking indecent marks into her neck and had one-two fingers at her clit because she was ready-set-go, clenching around him and coming hard with dizzying little spots of light in her vision. 

“Let me taste it,” he said all in a rush and she didn’t think before her fingers were pushing into his mouth. His mouth was obscene-full-lips over her fingers as his hips fucked fast-and-hard into her. He shuddered out-of-control, eyes closed and skin flushed red when he came. It was half-a-breath later when he turned and dropped her on the couch, mouth a quick-damp touch against hers and then down-down her body. “Can I?” he said.

“Fuck yeah,” she gasped. She pulled her knees up, wiggled her hips against the arm of the couch he’d balanced her hips against and then he lapping up the slippery-wet-mess of her orgasm. His hair was long enough to pull and the vibrating of his moans made her thighs twitch. It was almost a shock when her legs tightened around his head and her hands were shoving his head down. He was sucking at her clit with his thumb pressing just against her opening when she came. “Stop, stop,” she said when he didn’t quit. She pulled herself away and he crossed over the arm of the couch to crawl up over her body.

“I’ve wanted that for so long,” he said.

She ran her thumb across his lips and pulled him down to kiss him again.

\--

It wasn’t easy, though. Altair-was-an ass and Malik was hard-to-get-along with. They didn’t fall into anything with grace but tumble chaotically until they found a brief plateau. 

Like early Tuesdays before work when Altair got time at Blue Swan to work on his routines. He looked best in his practice pants with that look of playful concentration on his face as she sat cross legged on the stage and watched him showing off for her. 

“Desmond said you were less gay than before,” she said one day when he was re-enacting the gyrating number he had done at his last job. It would have made sense set to a bit of music but it was vaguely ridiculous with nothing but the sound of the cleaning crew mopping the floors to back it up. 

“Well, whose fault is that?” he asked before he pulled himself up the bar. 

“I’ll get a dick if that’s what you want,” Malik said just to watch Altair lose his grip on the bar and nearly land on his face. He recovered in time to make it look purposeful but the pink blush on his ears gave him away. “Come on, sweet cheeks,” she said, “you haven’t convinced me I want to ride your dick yet.”

His smile was more perfect than anything. “I’ll just have to try harder.”


End file.
